Consumers need to know that whatever product they are interested in purchasing has been manufactured with safety in mind, but the way some safety measures are executed can be a little misleading. One recent ABC report points this out by identifying a more complicated truth behind the way expiration dates are displayed on some packages.
While this is a feature of product packaging usually independent from food labels, it still illustrates the need for companies to know how to make labels that distinguish between different types of information nice and clearly. When it comes to expiration, the article quotes National Food Lab employee Jena Roberts, who notes that many foods can last a lot longer than the date listed, because that’s a voluntary claim.
“The ‘use by,’ the ‘sell by,’ the ‘code dates,’ the ‘best by’ dates — those are all there for quality reasons,” Roberts told the source. “They are not there for safety reasons.”
This doesn’t mean that packaged food can never go bad, just that consumers need to know how much this should really play a role in their purchasing decision. In Boston, John Connolly, the councilman running for mayor in that city’s election, has been making much of years-old story in which he discovered hundreds of boxes of spoiled food products in local schools.
However, ABC lists some of the “real” recommended use-by periods for different kinds of foods, suggesting that companies might benefit from communicating this a little more clearly.
No matter what changes are made to a product’s label, a color label printer can be sought out to make them distinct.
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